


Play It Again

by AllonsyHelen



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Classic Rock, M/M, brief mention of disliking metallica sorry guys, classic meet cute, piano playing, there are notes slipped under doors and everything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 11:05:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6608299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllonsyHelen/pseuds/AllonsyHelen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Dear piano player in apartment #3,</p>
<p>do you take requests? you should, because I’ve woken up to you playing piano every day for a year and a half now. led zeppelin. that’s my request.</p>
<p>play it or get the led out. ;)</p>
<p>-dean winchester, apartment #2”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Play It Again

_The only thing Castiel planned for the funeral was the music. He spent hours in the basement where he and Balthazar kept their boxes of records, poring through them, discarding the ones that were too bright or not bright enough, too somber or not somber enough. He was pickier than he could afford to be, considering that he only had a week to plan the whole funeral and he spent five days choosing the music and the morning of the sixth calling Gabriel and telling him that he couldn’t do it and asking him to please drop everything, come to Chicago, and plan the funeral._

_Gabriel did it, of course, because Gabriel always did those kinds of things for Castiel. He left the play he was directing to the assistant director (spent the weekend texting and occasionally calling the poor guy though) and his beloved Brooklyn apartment, just for a few days, to plan a funeral for his brother-in-law, killed in a motorcycle accident right outside of his house._

_Tragic as fuck, and there are no songs that can capture that._

_That was what Castiel discovered, ultimately._

_He only lasted a month in the house he and Balthazar shared before he put it up on the market, hopped on a plane, and landed on Gabriel’s couch. It was supposed to be temporary until he got the money from the house being sold to move into his own apartment, but then Gabe’s weird punk roommate moved out of the second bedroom and Cas moved in and started hanging up posters and setting out his records. He got a job at a music store he wasn’t quite hipster enough for. The day he came home to a piano being hauled up and into the apartment, he just looked at Gabriel, who was overseeing the process with a cup of coffee in his hand and a smirk on his face, and he nodded. Gabe nodded back._

_A year went by, then another seven months, four days._

 

Every evening after work, Castiel comes home and plays the piano for an hour. It’s a ritual, nearly a compulsion, and Gabe knows to steer clear of him until he’s finished. Even if Castiel comes home starving, he puts dinner off until he’s finished playing. Evening is the hardest part of the day because it was always his favorite with Balthazar. They would both get home from work and make dinner. Sometimes they would put on big band swing music and dance around the kitchen. Sometimes Castiel would sit on the counter and tell Balthazar about his day at work, counseling children in a facility for kids with behavioral disorders. And Balthazar would listen with rapt attention, and sometimes he’d coax Castiel down and into a chair and give him a massage, leaning over him to kiss his hair or his forehead, running his hands across Castiel’s chest…

Evening is now the worst time of day, and Castiel loses himself in his fingers on the keys of the piano until it’s over.

The building is small and there are only four apartments, each taking up their own floor. The apartments are small, the bedrooms only big enough to hold a bed and a cabinet, the living room containing just a couch and, now, a piano, and the kitchen is a squeeze in the mornings with two cranky bodies waiting for the coffee to percolate.

Gabe and Castiel live on the third floor. The woman who lives above them is a conservative woman who was probably in a biker gang at some point. Castiel always skirts around her bike chained up outside on the curb with trepidation and a downturn of his lips. The couple on the first floor is fresh out of Texas, hipster types who moved to Brooklyn with city lights in their eyes but now both work dead-end coffee shop jobs. And on the second floor…

Dean Winchester.

Castiel walks past him sometimes in the morning as he comes in looking tired in his EMT uniform. He gives him a nod and tries not to look him in the eye – those beautiful eyes – and Dean always mutters, “Good morning.”

That’s all they ever say. “Good morning.” But with that rumble of a voice Dean’s got, it’s hardly enough.

Gabe encourages Castiel to go downstairs and just knock on Dean’s door every time the subject of Castiel’s love life comes up. But Castiel can’t. He would fall for Dean; he can feel it in the way Dean says good morning and the way Castiel’s heart pounds whenever he does it.

So that’s why he can’t just go knock on his door. That’s why he can’t talk to him.

He has his piano. He has his job. He isn’t lonely.

*****

It’s September, which is the perfect time for beginnings. The pavement is still hot but if Castiel concentrates while he walks home from work, he can feel a cool breeze coming up the street from the water several blocks away.

It’s been a long day. He likes his job, but it isn’t nearly as fulfilling as his previous job was. He went to school for psychology and counseling with a concentration on children with behavioral disorders. He’d had the perfect job back in Chicago, but he had to leave it behind. He’d gotten this job at the music store (“Music and More”, though there’s nothing “more” but a few bookshelves in the back with secondhand books that people can take if they leave a book in return). He had never planned on it being permanent, just like living with his brother wasn’t supposed to be permanent.

But here he is, manager, working 40 hours a week, and not really minding it but not loving it either.

He’s considering this, and the fact that it’s a rut and he knows it, when he sits down at the piano. He closes his eyes and starts to stroke a simple melody out of the keys, warming up his hands. Gabriel is putzing around in the kitchen, baking something that smells delicious, and the sound of his whisk forms background noise for what’s turning out to be Yiruma’s Reason, which always felt autumnal to Castiel. He lets the music surround him, lets his mind wander into it and get lost, unfocused on anything. The music slows, the oven timer is beeping, and there is a knock on the door.

“Get that, Castiel!” Gabe calls from the kitchen, and the music comes to an abrupt halt.

Castiel stands up and goes over to the door and opens it but there’s no one there. He frowns, and then notices – there’s a piece of paper on the floor outside the apartment.

He bends to pick it up and reads what it says –

“Dear piano player in apartment #3,

do you take requests? you should, because I’ve woken up to you playing piano every day for a year and a half now. led zeppelin. that’s my request.

play it or get the led out. ;)

-dean winchester, apartment #2”

Castiel reads it twice in complete awe, and then high-tails it into the kitchen to show Gabe, letting the door slam behind him.

He reads it out and Gabe stares at him, also awed but with a plate of cooling brownies in his hands.

“Oh. My. _God._ Cassie.” Gabe’s eyes are wide and Castiel knows for sure he’s blushing and that Gabe can tell. “He better be gay and you better hop on that dick because this is one hell of a meet-cute.”

“I don’t _know_ any Led Zeppelin!” Castiel exclaims, putting a hand to his forehead.

“Then you go to the _music store_ where you work and you figure it the fuck out!” Gabriel rolls his eyes and snatches the note from Cas’s hand. “You better not overcomplicate this until you kill it dead.”

Castiel sighs and leans against the counter. “I probably will.” He reaches out and takes a piece off of one of the brownies and pops it into his mouth thoughtfully.

*****

In the end Castiel decides to play The Rain Song. Stairway to Heaven would be too cliché and the Rain Song isn’t too hard. He watches a few piano covers of it on YouTube and then takes to the piano. It takes him a few evenings of pecking away at it fairly slowly, which he hopes Dean will understand, before he has it down pat.

When he sits and plays it through all the way to his satisfaction, there’s another knock and another note. This one says,

“Dear Rainman,

hope it’s not offensive to call you that. you’re a fucking piano genius or something. jesus. thanks for that though. seriously didn’t expect you to do that.

would it be too much to ask for some AC/DC? or another zeppelin song! whatever you want.

-Dean Winchester, classic rock fanatic, expert note writer”

It gives Castiel a little laugh and he decides to just go ahead and learn Stairway to Heaven while he’s at it, because he really should know a few more classic rock songs. He learns that alongside AC/DC’s Thunderstruck because it’s not like most of what he plays.

This earns him another note, this time a bit longer:

“Rainman,

okay actually decided not to call you that. sorry. one last time just for a good laugh though shouldn’t hurt. thunderstruck was something fucking else. dude. you can fucking play.

I like listening to you play while I’m getting ready for work, which usually sucks since everybody else is winding down for the day.

play whatever you want but the classic rock is working great for you man

-dean, newfound piano appreciator”

So Castiel learns Wild Horses, because Dean likes classic rock and Castiel likes the Rolling Stones. Gabriel makes fun of him for finally joining the 20th century.

“Seriously, why won’t you play anything modern? Do you actually hate me? I’m the one who has to listen up close to this!” he whines. He’s making cupcakes and Castiel is sitting on the counter with a book, half reading, half keeping Gabe company. “Dean _Winchester_ doesn’t live with you! And suddenly you’ll do anything he wants? Is it the eyes?”

“No. It’s because I pay half of the rent to live here, you’re my brother, and I happen to also enjoy playing classic rock songs on the piano,” Castiel says, straightening his back a little as he says it.

Gabe rolls his eyes and plops batter into one of the cupcake holders with flair. “Right, sure, it has nothing to do with a certain attractive EMT who lives,” he hits his foot against the floor twice, hard and loud, “right down there.”

“Don’t!” Castiel exclaims, hopping off the counter. “You’re so rude, Gabriel.”

Gabe just waves a hand dramatically through the air. “Haters call me what you will. I’m just calling it like I see it, Cassie.”

*****

Castiel keeps waiting to run into Dean going into or out of the apartment but they have fairly different schedules, so they don’t see too much of each other. Which is fine, but disappointing.

Once he masters Wild Horses, he receives the following note from Dean Winchester, who still knocks and then leaves before Castiel can open the door. (Although Castiel does linger, giving him time to make it down the stairs and safely back into his own apartment before he opens it.)

“Piano Man –

dude. wild horses was great. is it weird if I keep writing you notes just to say how good you are?

I want to know your name. I’m not really a shy person but I kind of just woke up and I don’t exactly have time to have a long chat.

-Dean, busy nocturnal extrovert”

When Castiel comes home the next day he has a note firmly in his hand, and he slides it under Dean’s door for him to find when he gets home:

“Dean,

Thank you for making requests and for not minding me playing piano. I had never considered that I might wake you so I apologize for that. I hope you liked Wild Horses. I used to listen to it when I was younger a lot.

Let me know if you ever want me to play something specifically or if you want me to stop.

-Castiel Novak  
Piano-loving Introvert”

*****

A few weeks pass, and more notes are slid under doors. Castiel learns several new songs and finds that he doesn’t like Metallica very much at all. Playing piano when he gets home has ceased to be a mindless task, a cocoon to save him from feeling anything. Instead it becomes the best part of his day; playing piano for Dean Winchester makes the evenings good again. He finds that by dinnertime he’s always smiling, and sometimes he plays for longer than an hour. Sometimes he plays for two, long after he’s sure Dean has already left for work.

He never runs into Dean as he comes and goes—

Until he does.

It’s afternoon on a Saturday, days Castiel usually spends inside. But it’s late November, and it occurred to him that if he wanted to enjoy the autumn markets before they disappeared for the winter, he’d better do it.

So he’s coming back with his arms loaded down with vegetables and a new jacket, climbing the narrow stairs, when he looks up and sees Dean Winchester standing on the landing, looking down at him.

He pauses, fumbles for just a moment, and then steels himself. He smiles and heads up to the top of the stairs, where Dean moves aside for him, eyes more beautiful than Castiel remembers them being. And there are freckles sprinkled across his cheeks that Castiel never noticed before the handful of times they’d run into each other.

“Hi,” he says, and Dean replies with a soft echo.

“Hi.”

“I’m Castiel,” Castiel says.

“I know,” Dean tells him.

There’s a moment of silence, not too tense, but awkward enough that it’s a relief when Dean speaks again. “I’m changing shifts,” he says.

Castiel’s head tilts.

“I’m working afternoons and evenings now.” Dean’s tone is apologetic but uncertain. He’s watching Castiel’s face very carefully.

His words and their meaning sink in, and Cas frowns. “Oh.” So Dean won’t be able to listen to him play anymore.

“Yeah.” Dean rubs his neck. “Uh.”

“Well. Okay,” Cas says with a little nod. _So, that’s that._ He tries not to look as heartbroken as he feels. He hadn’t realized just how much he loved sharing music with Dean.

“But maybe we could hang out sometime? We could get breakfast together,” Dean suggests hopefully. “I haven’t gone out for breakfast in…a long time.”

“That sounds…really nice,” Castiel says. Does Dean mean it? Does he really want to go out for breakfast with Castiel?

“Does it? Okay cool. Good.” Dean ends up giving Castiel his number and they part ways, Castiel promising to text Dean with when he’s free.

The next morning, Castiel wakes up around 8, goes to the piano, and plays The Rain Song. The early morning sun shines through the window and hits the light brown wood of the piano directly in a way he’s never seen it do before.

When he finishes, there’s a knock on the door. He gets up and goes to it, expecting another piece of paper, but when he opens it, there’s Dean Winchester himself, holding a carton of eggs and a bag of sliced bread.

“Maybe we could eat in?” he suggests, and Castiel breaks into a smile.

“Sure.”


End file.
